As I sit down to write this post, I feel it would be redundant. Better writers have paid richer tributes to the King of Pop.
However for me, the connection I feel with MJ is a deeply personal one. And if I dont pen this down now, I'll always feel I denied an old friend his due.
When a friend messaged me the news of his demise, I hoped that it was one of the cruel jokes that the media seemed to play out from time to time.
Fighting reality with blind hope, I turned to the internet, only to have the worst reaffirmed. MJ had died of a cardiac arrest, at the age of 50.
Involuntarily, thoughts played back in my mind when as a kid, my dad introduced me to this phenomenon. As I watched Thriller on VCR in continuous loop that summer vacation, I fell in love with the persona of this man, who moved like magic, whose feet seemed to have a life of their own.
There was something indescribably smooth about the way he danced. Each step just seemed to naturally flow into the next. There was no abrupt stop and shifting of steps. Nothing. Just pure continuous fluidity of movement.
This was no circus performer either. This was not a person who tried to be famous by bending his body in unimaginable angles. Dancing seemed to be a natural extension of his personality. MJ seemed to have the ability to transform every mundane act into an exquisite dance step. Everything about him was graceful. Heck ! he could do pelvic thrusts without making them look vulgar!
For me, that did it. My disconnect between western pop had just been bridged.
Like countless other kids at that age, I practised the moonwalk, threw up my right leg in his signature style, bought slip-on shoes, and tried to get the pants stitched a little short of the ankle, and entertained family and friends, well atleast until I grew a little older ...
However, even as I grew older, I never grew tired of his music, and he never stopped entertaining. As news that MJ was coming out with "Rock My World", after a long hiatus, spread, I remember the eagerness with which I awaited glimpses of the video on music channels. His appearance had changed now, but for me, his dance still had the supple smooth flow, I had witnessed for the first time almost a decade ago. Even the music was still very characteristic of him, although not his best.
Like Mozart to music, Da Vinci and Van Gogh to painting, to me Michael Jackson represented everything that was the highest in his art, and more importantly the purest. Try as anyone else might, they would only end up as imitations. He was there first, he paved the way !
They say that Thriller remains unsurpassed in all-time record sales till date, with over a 100 million copies sold. However numbers don't do justice to this man.
I'm always going to remember MJ as someone who made the times in which I lived exciting, someone who has given me permanent boasting privileges, to those that come after me, about having shared the same time in history with the greatest performer there ever was, someone who made growing up fun ...
RIP my friend. You deserved better !
